Romain Grosjean survived a crash filled fast Six to win the pole for tomorrow’s Firestone Grand Prtix of St. Petersburg. It is his second career pole. Grosjwean led a trio of Andretti Autosport cars in the Fast Six. Teammate Colton Herta will start second. Kyle Kirkwood will start sixth after a crash early in the final round.

The top six:

Romain Grosjean 59.5532 seconds

Colton Herta 59.96871::

Pato O’Ward 1:00.163

Marcus Ericsson !:00,4435

Scott McLaughlin No Time

Kyle Kirkwood No Time

Notes

The second round featured three cars from Andretti, three from Arrow Mclaremand three from Ganassi. Team Penske had just two cars advance- McLaughlin and Will Power.

Kyle Kirkwood had a great weekend going until he locked up the brakes and hit the wall on the first lap of the Fast Six. I still think he will have a strong race tomorrow.

We may be seeing the beginning of a rivalry between Arrow McLaren and Andretti. The teams have had the strongest cars all weekend. Whar=t a great story to dollow this year.

Grosjean’s pole is the 50th for the Andretti organization.

I tried following qualifying on the updated Indycar app. There are still some bugs to work out. The session time always started at 15:00 minutes and didn’t correct until about four minutes remained. The positions updated slowly, with a driver listed twice as his spot changed.

The new qualifying procedure did not profuce a radical change from the past.

The lineup sopuld make for a very interesting race tomorrow. Tire strategy and how the cautions fall-and there will be cautions- will determine the outcome.

Rinus VeeKay felt his lap was hindered and cost him a chanc to advance. He will start 24th. Veekay was in the top six early in his round 1 group and poised for a final run.